Steamed chicken rice

Today’s recipe is Cantonese-style steamed chicken and rice. It’s a family recipe from one of my readers, Hannah Ong. She says: “I learned this from my grandmother and now I make this on regular basis for my family.”

Of course as you see in the video, she also loves to cook Korean food on the weekend. This was filmed in Hannah’s house in Singapore; the cameraman was Alex Ng and Hannah’s mother assisted us in the shoot. I really wanted to meet Hannah’s grandmother, but unfortunately she was not home when I visited. If you want to see more of what I did in Singapore, photos and stories from the potluck party meetup with my readers, check out my blog post.

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Even though the name of the dish is steamed chicken rice, there’s lots more to it than just chicken; good ingredients like Shiitake mushrooms and cabbage. It’s all cooked together in a rice cooker and usually served with chili sauce. Does it sound like a Korean dish? Yes, it reminds me of Korean kongnamulbap. : )

One plate of this dish is a wholesome meal: it contains chicken, rice, mushrooms, and vegetables. This kind of recipe is what I really love: hearty, traditional, home-cooked food.

Directions

Mix the marinade with the chicken by hand. Keep in the fridge at least 30 minutes*tip: for best results, set overnight

Heat up a wok and add 1-2 tbs vegetable oil.

Stir fry a thumb of ginger first, then add garlic and soaked dried shrimp until fragrant.

Add chicken and stir-fry for 2 minutes.

Add the mushrooms, Chinese sausage, and cabbage.

Add rice, Chinese cooking wine, and the water from the soaked mushrooms.

Transfer the mixture to a rice cooker and add 2½ cups of water.

Add chicken stock concentrate and start the rice cooker.*tip: If you don’t have a rice cooker, you can use a thick bottomed pot. Cook over medium high heat for about 10-15 minutes and lower the heat to simmer for another 10 minutes.

When the chicken rice is done, transfer it to a serving plate and serve with chili sauce.

Optional garnishes:

Rinse the salted charcoal off the duck egg. Boil it for around 10 minutes and cut in half lengthwise.

Put some fried shallots and Chinese parsley on top of the rice and the halved duck egg on the side.

15 Comments:

hi maangchi!
instead of chicken stock concentrate, can i use Chicken Bouillon powder? i don’t have a rice cooker and i want to double the rice. so for 4 cups of rice how much water should i use and how long should i cook it for?
thank you in advance!

I am not Maangchi. Your inquiry caught my attention as this recipe looks very promising. I hope you do not mind if I give your inquiry a go.

Cooked rice is 1 cup of uncooked rice in 1-3/4 cups of water simmered in a covered pot for 18 minutes. Remove from heat, take the lid off, place a kitchen towel over the pot, put the lid back over the towel and let it sit for at least 5 minutes. The kitchen towel will collect excess steam/moisture from the pot. This is how I would cook this recipe without a rice cooker – simmered for 18 minutes, then kitchen toweled.

So, for the addition of two cups of uncooked rice you will add an additional 3-1/2 cups of water.

The water used in this recipe for 2 cups of rice is rather low at 2-1/2 cups – it is 1 cup short. But there are a lot of other ingredients with liquids that will add water as they cook with the rice, especially the cabbage.

Chicken stock concentrate is either a liquid or a powder, like you already have.

I would dissolve the powdered chicken bouillon into the 2-1/2 cups of water the recipe calls for. I suggest using 1 tsp per the recipe PLUS the appropriate amount, probably something like 1 tsp bouillon per cup of water, for the additional 3-1/2 cups of water you will be adding to get the additional rice.

I have not made this recipe, yet. But I often make a simplified version of something similar. I use short grain rice with it. I do not have a rice maker so I cook it exactly as I described above.

Dark soy sauce is the regular, normal, everyday soy sauce that westerners know, use, and love. Chinese parsley is called cilantro in the west and is the leaves of coriander.

made this the other night. definitely 5 stars! thank you so much. i used boneless chicken breast and the chicken came out a little overcooked. i cut it up into pretty small pieces. any advice? would cutting larger pieces help? or marinating it overnight? stir frying it a little less? different cut of chicken? any advice is appreciated.
thank you.

Thanks so much for posting this recipe, Maangchi! I made it tonight with great expectation, and I was not disappointed at all. I had never tried the dish before, so I was excited to make it. I had to alter the recipe in a few ways for lack of ingredients (I couldn’t find any good oyster sauce and I replaced one cup of chicken broth for one of the cups of water needed to cook to rice because I had no chicken stock concentrate) but it was still delicious. I mixed in a little gochujang for a bit of spice. I’ll definitely be using this recipe again.

I made this yesterday. One word of caution. Make sure that the rice cooker is big enough for all the ingredients. It did not occur to me until the end. I froze half and cooked the other half.
My husband had such a good laugh. Ha, ha, he was lucky he got any rice at all for dinner.

Steamed chicken rice looks so delicious and it is very healthy. This recipe is perfect for me, I love the color and texture. I would love to try this at home and make it for my family. Thank you Maangchi for posting this recipe.